Disability, mental health & wellbeing

Voluntary reporting framework

At Emerald, we are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and are focused on creating a balanced workforce which reflects the customers and communities we work with. We are passionate about equal opportunities and the fair treatment of our global workforce.

We value difference and diversity and our aim is to provide an inclusive working environment for our current and future people, where difference and individuality is valued, encouraged, recognised and celebrated.

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Ensuring we are an inclusive and attractive employer of choice for people with disabilities and long term health conditions is really important to us, and we aim to provide policies, procedures and ways of working that support this.

The following sections of this report outline what we are currently doing to achieve this aim, and we are excited about the further steps we will make throughout 2023.

Our disability narrative

Area What we set out to achieve Progress made

Attraction & recruitment

To actively implement ways to attract people with disabilities.

To provide an inclusive and welcoming recruitment process which allows individuals to shine. 

  • Clearly displaying the Disability Confident logo reassures candidates we are welcoming of and wish to encourage disabled applicants. 
  • Our careers page spells out our commitment to diversity and inclusion.
  • All our roles are advertised with Flexa and Rest Less, and almost all are advertised as able to be carried out remotely.
  • Throughout the recruitment process, opportunities are provided for candidates to identify as disabled, enabling adjustments to be offered at any stage- from application to assessment.
  • We are committed to offering an interview to all disabled candidates who meet the minimum criteria of the role.
  • Interviewing managers have completed unconscious bias training to help us secure the best candidates regardless of sex, race or disability.
  • We have invested in a new recruitment system which enables us to track and report on equal opportunity data in a more robust manner.
Next steps
  • An ongoing review of our interview processes, including strength based interviews and different approaches for diverse individuals.
  • Using the Equal Opportunity data to inform future actions.
  • Encouraging recruitment partners in their diversity journey.

Internal support for colleagues with disabilities

To provide multi-faceted support for colleagues with disabilities.

  • Regular wellbeing meetings for all colleagues who disclose a disability or medical condition, including those that develop during employment, to ensure they are receiving appropriate support and/or adjustments.
  • Employee Assistance Programme and Occupational Health are available to support our colleagues.
  • Flexible working practices allow disabled colleagues to choose how, when and where they work.

Promoting a disability-friendly culture

To enable all colleagues to bring their true selves to work.

  • Our internal equality, diversity and inclusion networks offer a range of opportunities to hear speakers talk about their experience of disability, encouraging an open and accepting culture.
  • Colleagues have shared their own challenges in the internal ‘Lets Talk About’ campaign which have addressed both physical and mental health concerns.
  • Individuality is one of our core Values, and as a company we recognise and celebrate the power of difference and diversity, welcoming people from all backgrounds.
  • We have created interactive online resources championed by senior leadership to promote our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion culture. We ask that all new starters review this as standard.

Next steps

  • We will continue to focus on diversity, with speakers and other activities planned to raise awareness and provide information on how to support colleagues.

Data gathering

To use employee engagement surveys to collect data on levels of employee engagement.

To improve our understanding of our diversity demographic to inform our future decisions.

  • 'All about me' page captures personal data on a voluntary basis, including any new, existing or changing disabilities during the course of employment. We have improved to 79% of UK based colleagues completing the page, with 4% sharing that they have a disability.
  • Released annually, our Employee Engagement Survey is designed to gather data around how our colleagues feel about working at Emerald. We are proud of our 2022 score showing that 71% of our workforce feel fully engaged, and a positive score of 80% around ED&I, but have ambitions to improve on this in the coming years.
  • We regularly seek to understand our customer experience and listen to their feedback through Net Promoter Score surveys and have set ourselves challenging improvement targets.

Disability reporting

Data is a key focus for Emerald, as we know it is only through understanding the makeup of our business that we are able to identify areas for improvement and celebrate our progress.

Data is currently collected through self service HR records. Internal communications messages in early 2020 explained why this is so important to the business, and were transparent about what we do with that information. To thank colleagues for sharing this information with us, Emerald makes a donation to a charity of their  choice for every record completed.

We also request that candidates applying for roles complete an Equal Opportunities questionnaire to monitor the diversity of our applicant pool. In both these collection methods, we have asked; ‘Do you consider yourself to have a disability or long term health condition?’

Whilst we are pleased with the response to date, we recognise we have a way to go to ensure that our data genuinely reflects our people. We continue to strive to more accurately report on the percentage of colleagues sharing a disability.

Our mental health & wellbeing 

Mental health affects us all, and providing effective mental health and wellbeing support is key part of our drive to be an inclusive employer. We are really proud of the steps we have, and continue to take to support our colleagues. Here are just a few of those steps:

  • Time to Change Pledge signed in 2019 to demonstrate our commitment to change the way we think and act about men­tal health in the workplace
  • Wellbeing initiatives planned throughout the year, with an array of workshops aligned to national awareness days designed to support mental and physical health.
  • A dedicated Wellbeing room where colleagues can take time out to relax and concentrate on themselves, and a number of online ‘cafés’ to provide support for colleagues remotely.
  • Let’s Talk About…..campaign which invites colleagues to talk about their mental health and share their story across the business. So far we have covered areas such as Depression, ADHD, PTSD and more. 
  • Dedicated and personalised mental health support available through the Employee Assistance Programme.
  • We are an active participant in the annual Mental Health Awareness campaigns, and in 2022 we ran discussions and collated resources on a different topic connected with
    the official theme of Loneliness. All resources are now permanently available to all employees to access.
  • Participation in the Time to Talk initiative, encouraging colleagues to have conversations around their mental health.
  • Existing Mental Health First Aiders refresher trained and new MFHA’s recruited.. 

Transparency breeds trust, and we aim to continue to be open and accepting of everyone’s mental health, so that our colleagues feel able to bring their whole selves to work and celebrate individual differences.

Wellbeing reporting

In order to help us understand how well we are supporting our colleagues around mental health and wellbeing it’s important we ask the right questions. We have for many years carried out annual Engagement surveys, and following the participation in the Mind Wellbeing Index in 2019 we have also introduced a wellbeing specific survey.

These surveys provide data around: 

  • Our wellbeing initiatives, their participation rates and their successes
  • Our culture
  • Our information and knowledge sharing regarding wellbeing and mental health.
     

We will continue this journey into the coming year and aim to increase our wellbeing score year on year through targeted action plans, and an intention to openly publish these results.

Related topics

Policies

We follow a group of policies and guidance statements to ensure we operate in a way that meets, or exceeds, the requirements of our customers. 

/policies-information

Privacy

Find out how we process personal information, the systems we use to gather data and how we store and share information.

/about/inside-emerald/policies/privacy